


lost my balance (on a high wire)

by shineyma



Series: complications [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, F/M, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 21:46:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6583717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These aren't the circumstances Grant would have chosen for meeting Jemma again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	lost my balance (on a high wire)

**Author's Note:**

> Guess who has ten million things due today and decided to write fic instead of working on ANY of it? Yep, me.
> 
> Please note the series; this is a sequel to [mixing business and feelings](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5966773), so you should probably read that first.
> 
> Thanks for reading and, as always, please be gentle if you review!

Six years ago, a big part of Grant’s undercover role involved recruiting muscle for Jemma’s organization. She was the one who put him up to it, after shamelessly admitting that she was undereducated in the field of physical violence, but he ended up taking it a lot further than he originally intended once he realized how much he enjoyed it. Not just the recruitment, but whipping the recruits into shape, organizing patrols, designing security protocols…

Acting as de facto Head of Security was pretty far past his mission parameters, and he surprised himself with how into it he got.

He surprises himself now by being gratified to see just how many of his recruits stuck around.

Of course, that might just be for the convenience of it. He knows every ounce of his fury is written on his face, and any other security worth its salt would have stopped him the moment he set foot on base. But his people know him and know why he’s here, so they just get the fuck out of his way—and, in a few helpful cases, point him towards Jemma.

Skye is dogging his heels, determined to keep track of him, but she’s the only one; the rest of the team is at the command post SHIELD set up half a mile away, getting orders there’s no chance in hell Grant will follow. He wasn’t intending on bringing company to the base, but Skye stubbornly refused to remain behind, even in the face of Coulson’s half-hearted reprimands.

For once, she’s got the sense to keep her mouth shut, so he doesn’t mind. The tiny, assessing little glances she keeps darting at him are irritating, but as long as she doesn’t talk, he can keep his cool.

It’s very, very important to keep his cool.

Jemma’s operation has always been a mobile one, which is half the reason SHIELD’s had so much trouble bringing her down. She’s got semi-manned bases all over the world that she travels between as her science and whims demand, along with her collection of fellow scientists, guards, and test subjects. She maintains a few mobile lab stations that let her bring important in-process experiments with her (an idea that SHIELD shamelessly liberated and improved, which is the only reason the Bus is able to safely keep a lab), and it’s to one of those that Grant’s been pointed.

He’s expecting to have trouble picking out which one Jemma’s in. The lab stations are basically glorified cargo pods on wheels—so they can be transported by ground or by air—and they’re deliberately designed to be identical, the better to prevent sabotage in transit. (That part was Grant’s idea.) He figures he’s gonna have to poke his head into every single one he passes until he finds her, and it’s doing nothing for his temper.

Luckily, it turns out to be a lot easier than anticipated, because Ben Markham is leaning against the side of the very first lab station Grant comes across.

Markham was one of his earliest recruits, not to mention one of his most favored. Efficient, tactically brilliant, and refreshingly ruthless when necessary, he was the perfect choice for a second-in-command, and he did the job damn well. He was also unfailingly loyal to Grant, so it’s a little surprising the guy stuck around after he left instead of moving on.

Then again, considering just what— _who_ —he left behind…maybe it’s not.

As he approaches, Markham straightens. “Sir.”

The _sir_ , on the other hand, really isn’t a surprise at all.

“Markham.” Grant sweeps him with a glance, checking for weapons—there are plenty, obviously—and threats—not even a little—both. Markham looks as composed as always, without even a tiny hint of resentment that Grant turned out to be, technically speaking, a traitor. “Status?”

“Doctor Simmons is inside,” Markham says easily. “We’re on high alert. Teams one through six are out searching for Zach; seven and nine are trying to ID his kidnappers.”

The mention of his son—his _son_ —brings on a fresh surge of rage and fear, but there’s some curiosity in the mix, too. He grabs on to it with both hands, the better to control his fury.

“And eight?” Team eight was his personal crew, back in the day. He wonders what became of it after he left.

“I put them on guard,” is Markham’s calm reply. “Just in case. I don’t like having SHIELD in-house.”

“No,” Grant agrees tightly. “Me neither.”

Beside him, Skye makes a worried noise that he ignores. He needs to keep the depths of his rage under wraps, but he’s not gonna pretend he’s _not_ infuriated that SHIELD kept _his own son_ a secret from him.

“I need to talk to Jemma,” he says, and then looks to Skye. “You wait out here.”

“Ward,” she starts, face full of sympathy and concern, and he cuts her off with a sharp gesture.

“Let me rephrase that.” He keeps his voice carefully even, but she flinches anyway. “I’m gonna go talk to the mother of my kidnapped son. You’re gonna wait out here.”

She bites her lip, but nods, shooting a nervous glance at Markham. Markham eyes her assessingly in return.

Right. They don’t know each other. Two completely separate parts of his life are converging, here, and he can’t let himself forget that just because his son is missing.

“Skye, Markham. Markham, Skye,” he introduces briefly. “Markham was my second when I was Kozlov. I’m training Skye to be a SHIELD agent. You two play nice.”

Skye blinks at the order, but Grant doesn’t give her a chance to question it. He’s already headed up the steps into the mobile lab station—although he does pause briefly at the door.

“Grant Ward,” he adds, gesturing to himself, for Markham’s benefit. (No matter whose skin he’s gonna be wearing while he’s here—Kozlov or the agent of SHIELD or HYDRA or whoever else—there’s no reason not to use his own name.)

Then he pulls open the door and enters the lab.

…Which turns out not to be a lab at all.

The first glimpse he gets of it knocks the breath right out of him, and the door slips out of his hand to slam shut. This is a bedroom. _Zachary’s_ bedroom, if the race car bed and dinosaur wallpaper and scattering of childish toys are any indication.

Fuck.

Jemma is sitting on the floor with her back against the bed, a laptop open in front of her and a bright green pillow clutched to her chest. He doesn’t need to look at the bed to know the pillow is Zachary’s; her death grip says it all.

Her eyes are red-rimmed and her cheeks stained with tears, but that doesn’t stop the sharp punch of _want_ that hits him low in the gut. Even drowning in fear and misery, she’s as beautiful as ever. Her hair’s a little shorter, her face maybe a little thinner, but for the most part, she hasn’t changed a bit.

With one notable and very important exception: her expression, when she looks up at him, is all disdain.

“It’s about time,” she says icily.

Not really the greeting he would’ve hoped for, if he’d known they were ever gonna meet again, but it’s excusable. He draws on what little reserves of patience he has left to answer calmly.

“I was on the other side of the world,” he says. “I got here as fast as I could.”

“And you brought SHIELD?” she asks.

“As ordered.”

He means to follow up on that, ask _why_ exactly she wanted SHIELD, but before he more than opens his mouth, he’s distracted by a cluster of pictures hanging on the wall across from the bed. Throat tight, he takes them in one by one: Zachary and Jemma, Zachary and Markham, Zachary and some of Grant’s other recruits…Zachary in a tiny lab coat and goggles, tongue poking out in concentration as he pours water into a large pitcher.

“We were making Kool-Aid,” Jemma says, and he nearly jumps. He was so fixated on the picture, he didn’t even notice when she stood and came to join him. “But he wants to be like me, so he insisted on proper lab attire for our ‘experiment.’”

When he manages to drag his eyes away from the evidence of the life his son has been living without him, he finds silent tears slipping down Jemma’s cheeks. She’s staring at the same picture.

“I suppose I should thank you for your absence,” she continues. Despite the tears, her voice is perfectly even—and spiteful—as she lifts a hand to touch the image of their son. “If you’d been here, no doubt he’d be more interested in guns than science.”

All the rage that drained out of him when he realized exactly whose room this was— _is_ —comes rushing right back in at that. He fists his hands, grounding himself in the way his knuckles ache and sting after the hours he spent battering the punching bag.

“I didn’t know,” he says. She scoffs. “ _Jemma_. You have to know I would’ve—SHIELD never told me. I had no idea that you were—that we have a—”

He honestly can’t say it. The words _pregnant_ and _son_ just genuinely will not come out of his mouth.

But apparently his stammering is enough to get the point across to Jemma. Her lips thin as she turns away from the picture to face him.

“So you didn’t knowingly abandon our son,” she says, eyes sweeping him derisively. “Just me.”

And to that, Grant’s got nothing _to_ say. Nothing that’s not gonna give away more than he’s comfortable with, at least.

“Well.” She turns on her heel and crosses back to the bed. “This is your chance to redeem yourself. Zachary has been taken and his abductors need to be caught and _punished_.” Frowning, she returns the pillow to its place and absently straightens the blankets. “All of the destruction I can wreak is area-based. There are no pathogens or poisons I can inflict on the people who took him without risking affecting Zachary, as well. Therefore, it falls to you to teach these people a lesson.”

“Oh, I will,” he promises. He’s already itching to, already has plans unfolding in the back of his mind, the best and longest ways to make these bastards _hurt_ for taking his son.

He can’t let himself get distracted by that, though. Zachary has to be found before his kidnappers can be dealt with. And there’s still one very important question he needs an answer to.

“But why me?”

“Why you what?” Jemma asks without looking at him. She’s moved on to straightening the childish drawings hanging on the wall adjacent to the one with the pictures.

“Why did you ask for me?” He stalks closer, forcing himself to ignore the drawings. They’re another piece of his son’s life, another _something_ he wasn’t part of and doesn’t know, but they can wait a second. He needs to focus. “I recruited a lot of very violent people for you. Why not leave it to one of them? Why bring in SHIELD at all?”

“I have resources,” she says, “but SHIELD has more. The faster Zachary is found, the better.”

Grant definitely isn’t gonna argue that. “And me?”

She sighs and folds her arms over her stomach, turning to examine the room. He follows her gaze as it lingers: on the bed, the dinosaur shaped night-light, the battered toy box.

“As loathe as I am to admit it,” she says, quietly, “Zachary is growing up. He has questions about his father, of course—and the older he gets, the harder it is to distract him from them. Eventually, I’m going to have to provide a real answer.” She eyes him, more tired than disdainful, now. “So I’m giving you the opportunity to prove yourself.”

Something about that—maybe the words, maybe the tone, maybe just the evaluating look on her face—tenses Grant’s shoulders. His heart picks up speed, anticipating…something.

“And what exactly does that mean?” he asks.

“It means that your actions will determine what I tell Zachary. If you’re a worthy father, I’ll introduce you to him as such. If not…” She shrugs, careless. “Well, I have no end of loyal men who can serve as a stand-in. Markham, perhaps—or Jason; he’s already a father, and it might be nice for Zachary to have a sib—”

Before he can think better of it, Grant’s moving, slamming Jemma against the wall so hard the drawings rattle in their frames. His hands are tight around her upper arms—too tight, probably, but he can’t judge his own strength right now. All he can feel is the ice in his veins and the furious pounding in his chest.

“You are _not_ ,” he grits out, “gonna keep my son from me.”

“Aren’t I?” she asks coolly—like she’s not alone with and at the mercy of a man who could snap her in half without any effort at all.

“ _No_ ,” he says, leaning into her a little for emphasis. “You’re really, really not.”

Jemma’s silent for a long second; then she smiles up at him, clearly pleased. “Good answer.”

…What?

“Was that a _test_?” he asks, a little of his rage washing away.

“Oh, not at all.” Her smile sharpens a little, shifting her expression into a familiar superiority. “If you’re not a suitable father, you won’t be getting anywhere near my son, no matter how much you shout. But that—” she pats his cheek “—was a very promising start.”

It’s really not up to her. No one on Earth—not SHIELD, not HYDRA, not even John—is gonna interfere with Grant getting to know his son. He won’t allow it. He’ll kill anyone who gets between him and Zachary.

But he likes that she would try. He likes that she’s the kind of mother who cares enough to protect her son. It eases a little more of his temper, helps him get himself back under control—control enough to realize that he’s holding her with bruising force.

Control enough to remember that she likes it like that.

And to remember the last time he pinned her to a wall like this—that last, desperate fuck before he blew his cover and left her behind. His chest itches with phantom sensation, the way the lace of her bra scratched at his skin while she clung to him. He carried the mark of her nails on his shoulders for a week and didn’t celebrate when they finally faded.

Just like that, all the rage-induced adrenaline he’s been carrying for hours redirects itself, sliding neatly into lust. This _really_ isn’t the time, but…

But she’s warm and soft and still wearing that superior look—the same one he always used to love wiping off her face. He needs to do something with this buzzing under his skin, needs to _use_ it before his control snaps entirely and he does something he can’t take back—

“Um. Ward?”

It’s Skye, and she brings a draft of cold air with her. He was so focused on Jemma, he didn’t hear the door open.

Dangerous. As far as Jemma’s people are concerned, he’s a traitor; he should be watching his back.

“What?” he asks.

“They think they’ve got a lead,” Skye says.

Relief weakens his knees, and he leans further into Jemma, so close that the shaky breath she lets out shudders right through him. Desire and rage both abandon him, leaving only a hollow of fear in the pit of his stomach.

They need a minute. He can’t face Skye—face _anyone_ —like this.

“We’ll be right there,” he says, and waits until he hears the door close to look down at Jemma. “I’m gonna get him back.”

A lead isn’t an _answer_ , isn’t someone he can be pointed at and let loose on. But it is something he can use, and he will. He’ll take this lead and run with it and _find_ his son.

“You’d better,” she says, but the tremble to her lips undermines the threat in her tone.

When he was undercover, he was at her side almost constantly: sleeping in her bed, eating at her table, working from a desk in the back of her lab. She kept him close when he wasn’t off running missions for her.

In all that time, he never saw her like this. She’s always been short, but now she looks _small_ in a way she didn’t before. She looks vulnerable—helpless—in a way that a woman as dangerous as she is really shouldn’t be capable of.

It’s probably messed up of him, but he thinks he likes her better like this. Last time, he was just an amusement to her—someone to build her army and warm her bed.

This time, she _needs_ him.

“I will.” He releases her arms so he can cup her face as he kisses her briefly, reveling in the way she melts into it. “I promise, Jemma.”

The kiss helps, and so does her needing him. He feels steadier now, strong enough to go out there and face his people and hers—strong enough to keep his grip on his temper for as long as it takes to reach Zachary.

Then he’s going to let it loose, and the suicidal bastards who kidnapped his son are going to _pay_.

As he steps back, though, Jemma snags him by the sleeve.

“Ward?” she asks, tone lightly curious.

…Oh, right. She wouldn’t know.

Maybe he should get a name tag or something.

“Grant Ward,” he says. “My real name.”

“Well, Grant Ward,” she says, and suddenly all traces of vulnerability are gone, leaving nothing but steel in her expression. “It probably goes without saying, but if you betray me again? If you find Zachary and give him to SHIELD instead of bringing him back to me?” Her thumb slides over his wrist gently, stopping to tap over his pulse. “The only way your son will ever know you is as a science experiment. It will take you _months_ to die.”

It’s a serious and very credible threat. It makes him smile anyway.

“Never even considered it,” he says honestly. “But noted.”

“Good.” She gives his wrist a friendly squeeze, then pushes past him, heading for the door. “Just so long as that’s settled.”

Laughing under his breath, he follows her. Hell, who’s he kidding? Vulnerable or deadly or sleep-warm and sweet, he likes her anyway. He just _likes_ her. He always has.

Six years ago, he let his cover get blown because he knew he was getting too attached to her—attached enough that he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to let her go unless he did it right away.

It’s probably just as well that this time, he has no intention of letting go at all.

Ever.


End file.
